


little lion man

by serpentheir



Series: the king of carrot flowers (riverdale childhood fics) [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Archie Andrews & Betty Cooper Friendship, Archie Andrews & Jughead Jones Friendship, Childhood, Childhood Friends, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, F/M, Gen, Good Parent Fred Andrews, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Minor Fred Andrews/FP Jones II, POV Archie Andrews, Season/Series 01, can you believe im not writing jugheads pov for once? me either, just so u know, sad kids 2 electric boogaloo, this is a jarchie fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23996854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serpentheir/pseuds/serpentheir
Summary: "Dad, can boys marry boys?"Fred turned to look at him, his face serious. He braced his forearms on the counter, bending down slightly to meet Archie's eyes."Well, sure. If they want to.""I wanna marry Jughead when I get older. He’s my best friend, and my teacher said the person you marry should be your best friend."Fred dreaded having to explain to his son that sometimes other people were cruel for no reason, even if you'd never done anything to hurt them. And that even though boys are allowed to marry boys, sometimes – well, a lot of the time – it was more complicated than that.
Relationships: (past), Archie Andrews/Betty Cooper, Archie Andrews/Jughead Jones, Fred Andrews/FP Jones II
Series: the king of carrot flowers (riverdale childhood fics) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730500
Comments: 10
Kudos: 68





	little lion man

**Author's Note:**

> this sort of just...happened. it came about bc i was thinking about the part where betty says archie proposed to her when they were both little, and she told him to wait until they were older, and i was like "but what if i made it gay and sad" so here.  
> what is the timeline in this? idk! don't worry about it!  
> (title is from "little lion man" by mumford & sons)

> _Weep, little lion man,_   
>  _You're not as brave as you were at the start_   
>  _Take all the courage you have left_   
>  _And waste it on fixing all the problems that you made in your own head_   
>    
>  _But it was not your fault but mine_   
>  _And it was your heart on the line_   
>  _I really fucked it up this time_   
>  _Didn't I, my dear?_

They were reading _Waiting for Normal_ in Mrs. Crowley’s English class, and one of the kids in Archie’s class had raised her hand and asked what divorce was. Mrs. Crowley spent a few minutes explaining it, which prompted even more questions, and then questions about marriage, and they ended up spending the rest of the class discussing love and marriage and all that stuff.

When Kevin Keller asked, _“How do you know if you love someone?”_ Mrs. Crowley had just smiled and said that when you really love someone, and you want to marry them, they should be your best friend. The bell rang before anyone could ask anything else, and Archie raced home to ask his dad the question that he'd been too nervous to ask during class.

He got settled in the kitchen, his homework spread out in front of him, spinning around on the kitchen stool as his dad made him a sandwich. Suddenly, Archie remembered his question and stopped spinning to look at his dad.

"Dad, can boys marry boys?"

Fred turned to look at him, his face serious. He braced his forearms on the counter, bending down slightly to meet Archie's eyes.

"Well, sure. If they want to."

"Really?" Archie beamed, showing off his missing front tooth.

"Yeah, tons of people do it. What's got you thinking about that?"

Archie pushed himself off from the counter and started spinning on the chair again.

"I wanna marry Jughead when I get older. He’s my best friend, and my teacher said the person you marry should be your best friend."

Fred steeled himself against the counter.

"Well...when you're old enough, if you two want to, you can. But his family might not take too kindly to that."

"Why not?"

Fred realized what he'd brought upon himself by answering Archie's questions: he'd have to tell him, to the best of his ability, _why_ things were the way they were, even when they didn't make sense to Fred – didn’t make sense in general. He wouldn’t have wanted to shut Archie down, but he regretted opening up like this, dreaded having to explain to his son that sometimes other people were cruel for no reason, even if you'd never done anything to hurt them. And that even though boys are allowed to marry boys, sometimes – well, a lot of the time – it was more complicated than that.

"What about Betty?" Fred asked, hoping he might be able to save Archie from learning that lesson too soon.

"What _about_ Betty?" Archie repeated, confused.

"Well, she's your best friend too, isn't she?"

"Yeah, but...she's my best friend, but Jughead is my _best_ best friend. And he's funny, and he knows everything, and he's got cool eyes."

Fred laughed softly despite himself. "That's okay. It's just–" He cut himself off, thinking. He had no idea how to explain this to Archie. He’d thought this conversation wouldn’t happen for several more years, if ever. (Well, he admitted to himself, he’d known it was coming someday).

Fred cleared his throat. “Boys can marry boys, and girls can marry girls, just like boys and girls can marry each other, but there are some people out there who don’t like it.”

“Why?”

“They just…don’t. I’m sorry, Arch, I know that’s not a good enough answer. The truth is, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either, but that’s just how some people are. They don’t understand it, and they think it’s wrong, and they want to stop people from loving each other because of that.”

“Oh.” Archie sounded very small. “Would people not like…me and Jughead?”

Fred shook his head. “I don’t know, kiddo. Wherever you go, there are gonna be people like that. Cruel people, I mean. People who want to hurt others just because they think the way they feel is wrong.”

Archie was silent for a few seconds.

“Is Jughead’s family like that?”

Jesus, for a kid his age, Archie asked some hard-hitting questions. Fred was surprised by how quickly he was putting the pieces together.

“Some of them, yeah. It’s a little more complicated than that, but…they might want to make it hard for him.”

“Is Jughead’s dad like that?”

Fred paused.

“No. He’s not.” The story was much, much longer than that, but it wasn’t the right time for Fred to try and explain it. “Sometimes, though, when your family feels a certain way, they make it hard for you to feel any different. Even if what they believe is wrong, it’s not easy to break free of that. Sometimes people just…don’t want to do things if they might make their family upset.”

“But wouldn’t their family still love them? They have to, don’t they?”

“I wish, Arch,” Fred said with a sad smile. “I wish they did.”

“Why can’t someone just be different, then?” Archie pressed on. “And just be whoever they wanna be, even if their family doesn’t like it?”

“I don’t know, kiddo,” Fred said, his smile fading. “I don’t know.” But he knew well enough.

The next day, before school, Archie went out to the garden and picked a bunch of flowers, the little white and purple ones that grew in the grass, the ones his dad had said he was allowed to pick. He walked over to Betty’s house so they could walk to school together, and when she came down the steps, he thrust the fistful of flowers at her.

"Archie, what–"

"Wanna marry me?"

Betty looked at him, eyebrows furrowed. She glanced over her shoulder quickly to make sure her mom wasn't at the door.

“Oh, Archie,” she said, taking the flowers. A few petals fluttered to the ground. “We’re not old enough to get married. Ask me again when we’re older.”

And that was that, and Archie forgot about that conversation with his dad for a long time, until he started noticing things again, like how Jughead’s hands moved when he was writing, and how his hair curled around his ears, and he carefully filed that information away for later.

It was Betty who asked him again, after all, in the beginning of sophomore year.

He and Betty had always been friends, but that was it. He remembered asking her to marry him when they were younger, and just as quick, he remembered the conversation with his dad that started the whole thing. It had been Jughead in the first place, he realized. But – and he couldn’t remember why, exactly – it had seemed too confusing, too difficult to let himself think about that then, and his dad had asked _Why not Betty?_ And ever since then, Betty had seemed like the right answer. Even if he didn’t feel anything different about her than he did about his other friends, it seemed like everyone was just waiting for him to feel that way, so he’d tried to wait it out, too.

That night, for the first time, he’d told someone that he’d never felt whatever it was he was _supposed_ to feel with Betty. He’d run into Jughead right afterwards, and something about seeing him so soon after confessing that for the first time felt like rubbing salt into a wound.

And then he’d had to tell Betty that he loved her as a best friend, and nothing more (even though he didn’t see what wasn’t _enough_ about being best friends with someone).

Later that night, lying awake in bed as the lights from next door cast strange shadows onto his floor, he wondered if he’d managed to ruin everything with both Betty _and_ Jughead. He didn’t know what was wrong with himself, why he didn’t feel the right way or do the right things or why he kept fucking up and hurting the people he cared about the most.

The summer was ending too soon, before he’d had a chance to fix things, and fall threatened him with more decisions that he didn’t want to make. Football _or_ music. Studying music _or_ business. His dad _or_ his dreams.

Betty _or_ Jughead.

He fell asleep still holding onto what Jughead had told him: _it would’ve gone a long way with me._

Maybe they could talk about it. Maybe things weren’t permanently, completely fucked. Maybe they weren’t their families, and they didn’t have to stay bitter with each other. Maybe he could say sorry, and that would be a start, and eventually he could tell Jughead that he’d never meant to pick anyone else or push him aside. That it had always been him first, before life got in the way, and maybe they could start again.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! <3 comment to help me survive quarantine  
> you can find me on tumblr @jugheadsucks!


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